


every new year

by Bugggghead



Series: Bughead Drabbles & One Shots [34]
Category: Archie Comics, Archie Comics & Related Fandoms, Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Riverdale Writing Challenge, Vignette, but always together, different bottles over the years, glimpses of growing up, new years through the years, super duper fluffy, with a dash of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 07:30:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17382314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bugggghead/pseuds/Bugggghead
Summary: Betty and Jughead and a tale of the bottles they clean up over the years.





	every new year

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to @theheavycrown and @shibbycat for reading this over for me and the invaluable input <3 My submission for the Riverdale Writing Challenge prompt 1!

*

 

In middle school, it had been soda bottles. The clink of the glass rattling between their hands as Archie's snores filtered through the basement door. He'd always be the last one up, with nearly everything done by the time he returned to consciousness.

 

Eleven-year-old Betty would spearhead the efforts, wiping and rinsing the evidence of the pizza party and gathering up the trash before the Andrews would wake.

 

Even as time drug on, and puberty pulled Archie in the direction of anything with a skirt just a little too short, they'd always made time to end the year together. Starting the next with each other and a tray of Pop’s burgers, dreaming of what the future would hold.

 

-

 

In high school, it’d been beer bottles scattered across the trailer, remnants of FP’s celebrations sitting stale on every surface they could see. Betty came over like clockwork, following Jughead home after their ritual at Archie's and fanning out a plastic trash bag. Shed empty the dark glass bottles one by one as she helped collect the reminders Jughead wanted so badly to forget.

 

It felt like a fresh start when they were finished, a clean slate with which he could build the dreams of their next three hundred and sixty-five days upon each and every time. Their sophomore year was different, with her hand slipped in his and the two bags filled to the brim sitting just outside the door, the New Year, new start mantra felt as though it might hold more than it ever had.

 

-

 

In college, it’d been cheap champagne bottles mixed with half drank beers on the counters of Betty and Veronica’s shared apartment. He’d be the one to roll out of bed and assist her with the chore of tidying up even though Veronica insisted every year she could hire a maid.

 

All four years found Betty and Jughead with bags of trash from the night before sitting over by the apartment door before noon. The counters were always wiped meticulously, every sticky surface shining anew with the light streaming through the windows and the promise of the coming year fresh in their hearts. The very last year, with their final semester looming in the not so distant future, talks of internships and life-changing decisions sat on the edge of their lips - at least for that one day. New Year, new start, new them - always together and ever evolving.

 

-

 

In their twenties, it was baby bottles - still half drank, still littering various surfaces, but this time in their own shared space. He cleaned up happily while she slept on the couch after another night turned into morning with feedings only two hours apart.

 

All things considered, Jane was a good baby - she slept well, albeit in alternating two to four hour increments, and she ate even better, thanks in large part, he guessed, to his own propensity to devour nearly anything anyone would ever offer. She was a bit of him, and a bit of Betty, melded together into the precious scrunched up face he notices as she begins to stir.

 

With a newfound grace, one that he’d honed after a few too loud footfalls that had woke her with a cry and a dropped book that had sent her wailing just a few nights before, he padded over and slipped his hands under her swaddled layers, lifting her with ease as she woke with an adorable yawn. “Shh,” he whispered, “Mommy’s still sleeping.”

 

Propping her up on his shoulder and grabbing the last bottle he could find, he carefully tiptoed past the tree they’d meant to take down two days before and into the kitchen. It was their first Christmas with Jane, and then their first New Years, too. He figured this year, Betty would let the slip-up slide.

 

-

 

In their thirties, it was a bottle of aspirin that rattled in the morning. Jughead grabbed two first before passing it off to Betty who was rubbing her head as the first inklings of sun peeked through their curtains. Jane had stayed up until eleven-thirty, a valiant effort on her part and still hours later than her younger brother Dean. They’d stayed up longer than the kids, clinking their glasses of grocery store champagne together when it struck midnight then sharing a sweet kiss that turned into more.

 

The years had only served to draw them closer together, focusing on the family they’d worked so hard to build together. Even on their busiest days, they’d cap off the night with a sweet kiss and cuddle together in their well-worn bed. Domesticity wasn’t something Jughead easily fell into, it took years of work to accomplish and a life away from the town that had shaped them both. But with a decade and a half under their belt, and more stolen kisses and whispered secrets than they could count, they were living the life their teenage selves in the rundown trailer picking up half empty bottles could have only dreamed about.

 

New years and new starts were once something he’d relish in - but as it stood, starting over was something he wasn’t sure he could even fathom any longer. He’d gladly pick up bottles of any kind with her on the first of the year for the rest of life - even if downing just one meant he’d need an aspirin the following morning. The glint of the hovering ball reflecting in her irises was always worth it. Ticking off another year spent with the love of his life and the kids he was lucky enough to call his own made every year that passed just a bit better than the last.

 

But what he'd learned as the years flew by, was that no matter what year, what age, or what roof they stood under when their lips met at the start of each new year, a new start, now and forever, meant they'd tackle the year together - hand in hand, two halves of the same whole.

 

*

the end.


End file.
